Sephardi

The Sephardim are the Jews of Iberia, whose name comes from Sepharad, the Hebrew word for Iberia; around 1337 their communities filled the cities of Christian Spain and Portugal. Jewish settlement began in Roman times, and after Visigothic persecutions the communities entered a golden age under Muslim rule in Al-Andalus, where scholars made Córdoba a centre of Jewish learning.

Their position worsened under the Almoravids and Almohads and during the Reconquista, and the anti-Jewish riots of 1391 in Castile and Aragon brought massacre and mass conversion. The Alhambra Decree of 1492 expelled the Jews of Spain, and a Portuguese edict followed in 1496.

The exiles carried their Old Spanish speech, which became Judaeo-Spanish or Ladino, to Ottoman cities, the Maghreb, where the Haketia variety took shape, and Italian ports and Amsterdam.